The magazine awards cities points based on the number of new business projects they attracted and the sizes of those projects according to the jobs and investment amounts secured. The New Orleans region lands into the class of areas with populations between 750,000 and 2 million people.

While the survey covers 1995 to 2014, in a message celebrating the rating, Michael Hecht, president of the GNO, Inc., economic development group, said, "what is more remarkable, per publisher Mike Randle, is that Greater New Orleans had virtually no wins in the period before Hurricane Katrina, nor for three years after, meaning that nearly all of this performance has been concentrated in only the past five years."

Hecht quoted Ron Starner of Site Selection magazine saying, "You are on a roll that is completely unprecedented in American history."